Self Portrait, The Kid, 2009

So that's what they mean by peer pressure. By her second day of kindergarten, the kid had begun attaching things to her backpack, just like every kid at the school.

These doodads rotate frequently; none of these objects--except maybe that little car, a light-up Toyota Ractis we got in front of the Ebisu train station in Tokyo--has been on there more than a month now.

When I asked what the strap of her old swim goggles was doing on there, she gave me a perfect, deadpan, duhbecauseIwanteditonthere reply. And I realized this is completely her thing, executed in the medium of backpack dangles, and I am cool with it.